


Numb

by blackwyvern



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4906033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackwyvern/pseuds/blackwyvern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>!!!Season 3 Finale spoilers!!!<br/>After the impossible happens how do you process it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Numb

Donnie was alone. Logically he knew that wasn't true. His brothers were here. April was here. Casey was here. But at the moment he felt far away, as if they were opposite ends of the universe when in reality they weren't even on opposite ends of the ship. The darkened bunk he'd staked as his own felt constrictive but to be out in the hall or the control room just felt too open, too bright...

Too real.

He felt heavy, wrong. The tips of his fingers, his hands were covered by a numbness, not exactly a lack of feeling but rather as if touch was somehow dulled. His logical mind identifying the feel of shock and grief. He swallowed hard. Finding the reality of the emotions far removed from previously read text book descriptions.

His eyes slid shut, he should rest, he needed to rest. But behind darkened lids the memories replayed, a film he was powerless to pause or rewind. 

The sound of his father's body hitting the cement. 

A dull thud that reverberated through his entire being.

Reaching for Splinter, his mind already assessing that the wounds were fatal even before the rest of him had caught up. 

The pool of red spreading below them.

He hadn't realized his feet and knees had been coated until their rescuer had, tactfully, suggested that they may want to get cleaned up. For a ship piloted by a lone robot it certainly had all the facilities an organic person would need. Something Donnie knew he would wonder about eventually but for now the thought simply slipped inbetween, filed away for future reference.

He remembered nearly collapsing in the shower. Watching the red slowly run off his skin. For one desperate moment Donnie had the overwhelming urge to stop it. To gather it up. It was all the physical evidence he had left of their father. The man who had raised them, taught them, scolded them....loved them.

He'd bit his lip, pushing the insane urge down. It wasn't going to bring Splinter back. Nothing was going to bring Splinter back. Mute and empty he watched it slip down the drain, disappearing under the sleek metal drain with the hot water.

Numbly he'd left the shower.

It was not a pleasant feeling. He could hear Raph exchanging angry barbs with Leo somewhere down the corridor. Volleying blame around like that would ease the hurt they all felt.

Mikey's voice was harder to pick out in here. Quiet half formed sobs, the quick suck of air pulled in too hard in a desperate attempt to keep keening grief at bay. Donnie could hear April's muted voice as well. Offering his little brother comfort and easing her own pain.

Where Casey was he didn't know.

He remembered the farmhouse, that Casey had disappeared for almost a full day after they'd arrived.

The farmhouse.

A crushing weight of realization descended on him. They'd lost Splinter twice in one year. Only this time Donnie had seen the body, had watched the life drain from his father's eyes. This time there was no question, no hope that somehow Splinter had walked away.

Splinter was dead.

Slapping a hand over his mouth to fight the sudden urge to sob, Donnie curled into a tight ball. The sudden crash of emotion slamming against the walls of his mind.

Silently tears slipped from his eyes, his breathing turning into a hiccup as he fought himself.

He remembered when he was five, how he'd first really started to understand things. Splinters voice as he read to them.

Splinters hands, kind, gentle, tending to childhood bumps and bruises with infinite patience.

Splinters hugs, rare and welcome. When he was little and convinced he would die from even a minor sniffle those hugs had felt like lifesavers.

He shook. He didn't even hear the door to the room open. It wasn't until he'd felt arms around him and a beak buried in his shoulder that he realized he was no longer alone.

Mikey, his mind registered even as the recognition buried itself beneath a tidal wave of grief.

His little brother wasn't bawling anymore. Just holding him tight. Unable to hold it down Donnie keened, a piercing sob that barely diminishes the fast aching pit of his being.

Mikey offers no words. Nothing more then a physical bulwark for Donnie to crash each rising tide of emotion against.

He doesn't know how long it takes for exhaustion to finally find him. He has no track of time in this state. What he does know when he finally wakes up again, Mikey still curled around him, is that it still hurts.

It's a dull persistent ache in his bones, one he knows that could turn sharp and raw at any moment but the stinging numbness is at least gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I think the shock was pretty well done in the finale episode itself, though a wound like that would've had a lot of blood which they can't show on a kids cartoon. So while we wait for Season 4 I hope you enjoyed :).


End file.
